and peculiarities in the physical and moral
nature of humanity; and I will say further--the art of these chemists
is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the
remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or desires for vengeance."

"But, sir," remarked the young woman, "these Eastern societies, in
the midst of which you have passed a portion of your existence, are
as fantastic as the tales that come from their strange land. A man can
easily be put out of the way there, then; it is, indeed, the Bagdad and
Bassora of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' The sultans and viziers who
rule over society there, and who constitute what in France we call the
government, are really Haroun-al-Raschids and Giaffars, who not only
pardon a poisoner, but even make him a prime minister, if his crime has
been an ingenious one, and who, under such circumstances, have the whole
story written in letters of gold, to divert their hours of idleness and
ennui."

"By no means, madame; the fanciful exists no longer in the East. There,
disguised under other names, and concealed under other costumes, are
police agents, magistrates, attorneys-general, and bailiffs. They
hang, behead, and impale their criminals in the most agreeable possible
manner; but some of these, like clever rogues, have contrived to escape
human justice, and succeed in their fraudulent enterprises by cunning
stratagems. Amongst us a simpleton, possessed by the demon of hate or
cupidity, who has an enemy to destroy, or some near relation to dispose
of, goes straight to the grocer's or druggist's, gives a false name,
which leads more easily to his detection than his real one, and under
the pretext that the rats prevent him from sleeping, purchases five or
six grammes of arsenic--if he is really a cunning fellow, he goes to
five or six different druggists or grocers, and thereby becomes only
five or six times more easily traced;--then, when he has acquired his
specific, he administers duly to his enemy, or near kinsman, a dose of
arsenic which would make a mammoth or mastodon burst, and which, without
rhyme or reason, makes his victim utter groans which alarm the entire
neighborhood. Then arrive a crowd of policemen and constables. They
fetch a doctor, who opens the dead body, and collects from the entrails
and stomach a quantity of arsenic in a spoon. Next day a hundred
newspapers relate the fact, with the names of the victim and the
murderer. The same evening